Date Stamped

I won’t trouble to list marriages of siblings, cousins, and assorted relatives but I will tell you at each and every one I inevitably met up with someone questioning me on how long I’m planning to wait before I take the plunge. Though my answer was unvarying, it never stopped them asking at the next wedding and the subsequent myriad of baby showers following. My answer is always, when and if I find the right man, always followed by the predictable backhand lob of, and what if you don’t, no man is going to be perfect. This only prompts me to restate that I said, right for me, not right to someone else or to some unreachable status of perfect. For some reason this draws a crowd of relatives that seemed to be in a state near to terror that I may “run out of time.” I was smirking, I admit it, I believe in respecting my elders but I was so close to laughing I could hardly help it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like men, I date, I’ve even had several long term relationships and one proposal which I turned down but what exactly am I about to run out of time to do? Spawn, which I never had any intention what so ever of doing, as they know very well. It’s a personal choice for reasons I wont mention in this post. I just don’t get it. I have seen some friends stay with men that cheat on them and in one case, hit her. A close relative married the first man that asked her simply because she didn’t want to be left behind her friends and is more than unhappy with him now. I’ve also seen some wonderful loving relationships like my grandparents that loved each other to the day each died. I just don’t see the purpose of settling or marrying for desperation. I love and value me and I show that value in not letting someone treat me badly in any number of ways. I deserve better than a cheating, thieving or abusive man. I’ve never dated a man that abused or stole from me. When I found out a man was cheating on me I left him and eventually he cheated on the woman he thought was better than me.